A thousand suns

‘Okay, he’s either a German or he’s someone who took souvenir-wearing a little too far.’ Chris took a couple of shots of the exposed remains of the Luftwaffe tunic.

‘Seems like you really have got a genuine story on your hands,’ said Mark.

‘Let’s go in further. Somewhere back there we’ll find the story, the reason why this plane’s here.’

‘I’ll take point again.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Chris with a jittery, anxious grin.

Mark pulled himself through the bulkhead with an agility that reminded Chris of this man’s impressive experience in wreck diving. He followed through behind him, flippers clumsily disturbing a cloud of silt from the floor.

‘Go easy on the flipper action, Chris. There’s over half a century of undisturbed sediment sitting on every surface in here.’ He was right of course. The less motion they produced, the less time they’d waste waiting for it all to settle.

Mark panned his torch around the navigation booth. The beam picked out a small desk. He reached out a hand and very gently swept the silt off a corner of it. It billowed up into a small mushroom cloud that took a dozen seconds to settle to the floor.

‘See how I did that? If you sweep it off gently it settles down really quickly.’

‘Gotcha.’

Mark looked down at the corner of the surface he’d exposed.

‘There’s a map here.’

Chris glided over. He reached out to sweep away some more of the silt.

‘Gently… if that’s paper it’ll shred with the slightest touch. Here, let me.’

Mark lightly wafted his hand above the surface of the table. The sediment began to rise into a cloud. He stopped moving, and gradually it settled elsewhere, revealing a large section of the map detailing the coastline of New York State.

Chris looked up from the map. ‘They were heading for New York.. or on their way back from a trip there?’

‘Jeeez.’

‘Mind your eyes.’ The camera flashed brilliantly as he took a couple of shots. ‘Do you know the story of Rudolf Hess?’

Mark shook his head. ‘No. A Nazi, I guess.’

‘Yes, a pretty senior one. I forget when it was, sometime after they’d kicked our arses out of France, near the beginning of the war.. but this guy sneaked over to Scotland without Adolf’s permission to negotiate a peace deal with Churchill. He came over by plane.’

‘You think we might find the body of some other high-ranking Nazi, uh? Doing the same thing? Doing a Hess?’

Chris smiled. ‘Be one helluva great story, wouldn’t it?’

‘Don’t forget your old buddy when you’re rich and famous.’

‘Mark, if this turns out to be half the earner I think it’s going to be, then trust me, I’ll put a smile on your face too. Shall we press on?’

Mark checked his watch. ‘Yeah, we should. We need to be making for the surface in twenty minutes.’

Chris led the way. The space narrowed ahead as they passed through empty bomb racks on either side of a narrow walkway above an open space below.

Chris pointed down at it. ‘Bomb bay.’

‘Wow, there’s space for a lot of bombs on these racks,’ said Mark.

‘Yup. They carried a pretty impressive amount of ordnance.’

Chris shone his torch down into the open bomb bay. He could see past what looked like an immersion heater through the open hatch to the sea floor. The outer bomb bay hatch must have been open when she ditched, or perhaps ripped off by the sea on impact.

That’s an interesting shot.

It was a nice twist on the classic ‘bombs away’ image he’d seen in countless World War Two documentaries. The only world visible through the frame of the bomb bay was the sea floor. It was what Chris considered a concept shot; it summed things up nicely.

‘Mind your eyes.’ He took a couple more pictures.

They pressed on, making slow progress between the racks as their equipment frequently snagged and scraped on the metal spars. Mark looked anxiously at the racks. This kind of environment could trap a diver easily, especially with reduced visibility. He decided to reduce the dive time by five minutes to allow them some additional contingency. If they overran for whatever reason and had to come back through these racks in a hurry it would be inviting trouble, especially with Chris being so inexperienced at wreck diving and so easily disorientated, as the other night’s episode in the cockpit had clearly demonstrated.

Disorientated? Scared shitless more like.

Mark had been involved with a team of marine archaeologists who had discovered a U-boat off the coast of Gibraltar. It had attracted a lot of experienced divers with a passion for World War Two wrecks, and he’d been on site as a safety watchdog. One father-and-son team had pushed deeper into the sub than they should have and not allowed themselves a safety margin of air. They’d managed to kick up a lot of debris and lost their way in a blizzard of sediment and flakes of rust. The more they panicked the worse it had got. Mark pulled them out several hours later, quite dead. He had found them with the father’s regulator still in the boy’s mouth. The boy’s air must have run out first and the father had sacrificed his life to buy the lad a few more minutes.